


Glory, Glory, What a Hell of a Way to Die

by Todesengel



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Soviet brainwashing, free form, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2013-01-25
Packaged: 2017-11-26 20:29:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/654114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesengel/pseuds/Todesengel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Say, instead, that he wakes, and it is 1946, and he still remembers more than he should.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glory, Glory, What a Hell of a Way to Die

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Blood on the Risers", a WW2 Paratroopers song.

_Glory, glory, what a hell of a way to die  
With a rifle on his back as he's falling through the sky_

 

The first time he wakes – 

Except every time is the first time, after awhile, and he can no longer think in straight lines.

So. 

Say, instead, that he wakes, and it is 1946, and he still remembers more than he should.

(like pain and cold and death and life and falling forever through a frozen sky)

Or, perhaps, he does not remember what he ought to. Or, perhaps, it is that he glows too brightly with the reflection of Steve's beliefs. 

He kills the man they tell him to, because the man is German (a _Kommandant_ , they said, and perhaps there is truth in that) and because he is a soldier and because he is fighting a war and because he has always done what Steve could not and because he is broken inside (though not broken enough, not yet). But he will not kill the man's weeping wife, and so they put him back inside the box and he wakes and dies a thousand times. 

It takes them many years to get their formulas right. 

(and he can remember, now, those early years, when cryogenics meant a tub of freezing water and a man who would not truly die)

So, the first time he wakes –

But it's not really the first time, because it's 1949 and he is alive and he does not glow with reflected faith and he will not kill a German today. In this moment, this is what he knows: that he exists in this moment, but perhaps not before; that he breathes in air; that he has arms; that he has legs; that he has eyes that see things he cannot name because he has no words to name them. 

Above him, something speaks. 

Inside him, something listens. 

And yet the thing that listens is not him and he can but stare up and breathe and drool, for he is, he is, he is, and that is all he is. 

(in the time beyond the moment, the time he can neither know nor name, he will understand the words they say, and he can state with honest fact that he had nothing to do with inciting the Korean war; he's not sure how pissed he should be that nobody believes him)

When they put him in the box (which is not a box at all, but a metal tube filled, now, with something much colder than pure water) he exists and then he doesn't.

And now, the first time he wakes – 

The first time he wakes, he can say that the room is red in seven different languages, but he cannot say his name, for he has no name. They give him a knife, and he uses it to kill three men, who huddle in a basement in East Berlin and spit in his face and call him a monster. They give him a wire, and he kills an old woman with trembling hands. They give him a gun, and he feels no remorse when he kills the man and his wife and their pitiful child; they are traitors to the State and Mother Russia cries out for their blood. 

When they speak to him, now, he answers, and he is more than just a man, for he is winter and he is death and a ghost and a nightmare just begun. 

Then Stalin dies and he goes back into his box again. 

The first time he wakes, the room is red, and his name is János Racz, and it's 1956 and they send him to Hungary. 

(he remembers wiping blood off of a spoon and eating a dead man's dinner, sitting in a dead man's chair, splattered with a dead man's blood, as he explained to Rákosi just how healthy retirement could be)

The first time he wakes, the room is red, and his name is Yakov Morozov and it's 1958 and there is a little girl, a child of the Red Army, who does not dream of being a ballerina, and his orders are to break her. 

(he would have been kind to her, had he but known how, and when he sees her again he does not remember her; when she sees him again, she cannot forget)

The first time he wakes, the room is red, and his name is Danny Webster, and it's 1963, and they send him to Dallas, Texas, and even with all of his conditioning this country does not feel like home. 

(when pressed for details, he will neither confirm nor deny that he was anywhere near a grassy knoll)

The first time he wakes, the room is red, and his name is Fydor Baumhauer, and it's 1965 and they send him to Latveria and when he returns he is missing an arm and a kill and they are not pleased. 

(when they put him in the box after Latveria, they do not let him sleep before he drowns upon the viscous fluid that fills his lungs with ice and fear)

The first time he wakes, the room is red, and his name is Josef Vanek, and it is 1968, and his arm is metal (as it has always been; as it has never been) and they send him to Prague; it is not yet spring. 

(and, perhaps, it is from this time when he begins to count his age in seconds of red, in moments when he is alone in his head, before he remembers some other man's life that no one has ever lived)

The first time he wakes, the room is red, and his name is Steven Brown, and –

The first time he wakes, the room is red, and his name is Vassily Kozlov, and –

The first time he wakes, the room is red, and his name is Nassir Tulun, and – 

The first time he wakes, the room is red, and his name is Mikhail Pushkin, and – 

The first time he wakes – 

Except, of course, they are all first times and he does not remember all of the lives (all of the lies) he has been given. He remembers, only, the red room. 

So, the first time he wakes is the last time because the room is not red, and he has no name, and it is May 6, 2011 and there are six men standing over his box; one of them has a crowbar; four of them look very surprised; one of them is not really there. He kills the five men who exist, just because he can, and when he is done he looks at the man who isn't there and says, "You're not Control."

"I am not," the other man says. 

"Did you wake me?"

"No, but I know what did." The man who is not, who has eyes like a snake, who moves in shadows, holds out his hands and in them is a cube that glows with a blue light that both comforts and terrifies. "Would you like to find it? Would you like to know who you are?" 

In a room that is now red, the man who was Mikhail Pushkin, who was Nassir Tulun, who was Vassily Kozlov, who was Steven Brown, who has been so many other men (and who was, once, just some punk from Brooklyn who went marching off to war), smiles.


End file.
